Digital Home Thoughts: Amazon Inches Toward Movie Downloads

"The era of downloadable major motion pictures is nearing, but the biggest players are taking baby steps. Case in point: Amazon, which according to Variety is about to inch its way into the digital movie download market. The only catch is, the online shopping giant will probably tie its downloads to DVD sales. Amazon officials said last October the company was working on a movie download service, and sources say the company will launch with at least two big studios in its corner this spring. The new service will reportedly allow an Amazon customer to either pay for a download of a copy of the movie and apply that charge toward the purchase of a DVD, or be required to buy a DVD and then allowed to download that movie while the DVD is on its way."



Nifty and I do actually like the business model quite a bit. There are so many versions of this kind of service now but I don't know if any of them are going to do as well as most cable providers' On Demand or Pay-per-view services. I am quite happy with my combination of cable TV and Netflix and I really feel that it is the best price-value ratio. However, the one downside is that I don't get to keep the movies, so for those of you whoe like to collect DVDs, the Amazon service may sound quite appealing.